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Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches

Every week day, Certified Scrum Master, Agile Coach and Business Consultant Vasco Duarte interviews Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches from all over the world to get you actionable advice, new tips and tricks, improve your craft as a Scrum Master with daily doses of inspiring conversations with Scrum Masters from the all over the world. Stay tuned for BONUS episodes when we interview Agile gurus and other thought leaders in the business space to bring you the Agile Business perspective you need to succeed as a Scrum Master. Some of the topics we discuss include: Agile Business, Agile Strategy, Retrospectives, Team motivation, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Backlog Refinement, Scaling Scrum, Lean Startup, Test Driven Development (TDD), Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Paper Prototyping, QA in Scrum, the role of agile managers, servant leadership, agile coaching, and more!
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Now displaying: Category: Agile
Mar 16, 2017

The 2 dimensions of success for Mark are team (including PO and stakeholders) happiness and delivering running/working software. But how do we measure those? Do you have a system in place that helps you assess your success in those two dimensions? Listen to Mark explain how he measures his own success around these 2 dimensions of success for Scrum Masters.

 

About Mark Thuun

Mark started as a software developer when he learned some basic PASCAL from his dad taught. He was then 7-8 years old. Mark has been working as a Scrum Master since january 2015. For 2 years he worked with teams in the biggest telco in Denmark, and currently works for the danish national lottery.

You can link with Mark Thuun on LinkedIn.

Mar 15, 2017

Teams, and Scrum Masters often want to “hide” the problems they face by fear of upsetting the stakeholders. But is that really how you foster change? In this episode we listen to a story where showing the problem to all involved helped create the necessary change.

 

About Mark Thuun

Mark started as a software developer when he learned some basic PASCAL from his dad taught. He was then 7-8 years old. Mark has been working as a Scrum Master since january 2015. For 2 years he worked with teams in the biggest telco in Denmark, and currently works for the danish national lottery.

You can link with Mark Thuun on LinkedIn.

Mar 14, 2017

Teams can adopt new ideas, and learn how to improve. Or they can get stuck in the cycle of trying and quitting, but not learning. Which is the pattern in your team? Looking for the patterns of learning in our teams - and detecting the lack of learning - is a great way to prevent teams from committing performance suicide.

 

About Mark Thuun

Mark started as a software developer when he learned some basic PASCAL from his dad taught. He was then 7-8 years old. Mark has been working as a Scrum Master since january 2015. For 2 years he worked with teams in the biggest telco in Denmark, and currently works for the danish national lottery.

You can link with Mark Thuun on LinkedIn.

Mar 13, 2017

Distributed teams are hard to work with, but if you add cultural differences to the mix things get complicated pretty quickly. In this episode we hear a story of a team that was scattered, and a Scrum Master that did not know about the nuances of the team’s national culture. Listen it to learn what happened and how to avoid it from happening to you.

 

About Mark Thuun

Mark started as a software developer when he learned some basic PASCAL from his dad taught. He was then 7-8 years old. Mark has been working as a Scrum Master since january 2015. For 2 years he worked with teams in the biggest telco in Denmark, and currently works for the danish national lottery.

Mar 11, 2017

In this Bonus episode, we have Diana Larsen, and James Shore, both authors of acclaimed books about Agile. They join us to talk about their model called Agile Fluency Model™. We talk about how the model emerged.

For complete show notes, visit http://www.scrum-master-toolbox.org.

Links:

About the authors

Diana Larsen joins us today from Portland, Oregon. Diana leads the practice area for Agile software development, team leadership, and Agile evolutions at FutureWorks Consulting. Diana is co-author of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great; Liftoff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams; Five Rules for Accelerated Learning; and co-originator of the Agile Fluency™ model.

You can link with Diana Larsen on LinkedIn and connect with Diana Larsen on Twitter.

James Shore joins us today from Portland, Oregon. James is a long-time Agile practitioner who teaches, writes, and consults on Agile development processes. He is a recipient of the Agile Alliance's Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice, co-author of /The Art of Agile Development/, and co-creator of the Agile Fluency Model. InfoQ has named him as one of the "most influential people in Agile." You can find his screencasts at letscodejavascript.com and essays at jamesshore.com.

You can link with James Shore on LinkedIn and connect with James Shore on Twitter.

Mar 10, 2017

What do you use to evaluate your understanding of the system where you are? Christian suggest that some questions can help us go a long way towards understanding the system where we work. In this episode we refer to the Happy Melly community, where many other people like us try to understand how to create happier systems of work!

 

About Christian Delez

Christian is passionate about team dynamics and culture design. Christian loves trying new human interactions patterns to bring happiness for each individual in a team. Christian works as an agile project leader and coach. He also volunteers in www.GreatnessGuild.org and www.tealcamp.ch.

You can link with Christian Delez on LinkedIn and connect with Christian Delez on Twitter.

Mar 9, 2017

What aspects do you consider when evaluating your success as a scrum master? In this episode we review the 3 aspects that Christian uses to evaluate the impact of his work. And for each of those 3 aspects we discuss possible metrics for us to use.

 

About Christian Delez

Christian is passionate about team dynamics and culture design. Christian loves trying new human interactions patterns to bring happiness for each individual in a team. Christian works as an agile project leader and coach. He also volunteers in www.GreatnessGuild.org and www.tealcamp.ch.

You can link with Christian Delez on LinkedIn and connect with Christian Delez on Twitter.

Mar 8, 2017

Change resistance is a big topic in the change management community. So big in fact that many say it should be the focus of our work. But should it? How do you organize so that change becomes a normal aspect of daily work life? Christian shares the ideas they are trying out at his workplace, and how that could be useful for you in your efforts to help change take hold.

 

About Christian Delez

Christian is passionate about team dynamics and culture design. Christian loves trying new human interactions patterns to bring happiness for each individual in a team. Christian works as an agile project leader and coach. He also volunteers in www.GreatnessGuild.org and www.tealcamp.ch.

You can link with Christian Delez on LinkedIn and connect with Christian Delez on Twitter.

Mar 7, 2017

What have you done lately to help your team communicate better? Lack of communication, or even ineffective communication can cause problems. Serious problems. In this episode we talk about how communication can be improved, and what happens when it doesn’t.

In this episode we refer to the concept of Obeya, the large project room where the team can communicate and create the community aspect of a project.

 

About Christian Delez

Christian is passionate about team dynamics and culture design. Christian loves trying new human interactions patterns to bring happiness for each individual in a team. Christian works as an agile project leader and coach. He also volunteers in www.GreatnessGuild.org and www.tealcamp.ch.

You can link with Christian Delez on LinkedIn and connect with Christian Delez on Twitter.

Mar 6, 2017

The Definition of Done, or DoD, is an original part of Scrum. And it is there to help teams focus on the things that matter to deliver their work at an acceptable level of completion, aka “Done, Done”. But itself does not make miracles happen. There’s a lot of work in making a DoD stick, and Christian relates one of those stories in this episode.

 

About Christian Delez

Christian is passionate about team dynamics and culture design. Christian loves trying new human interactions patterns to bring happiness for each individual in a team. Christian works as an agile project leader and coach. He also volunteers in www.GreatnessGuild.org and www.tealcamp.ch.

You can link with Christian Delez on LinkedIn and connect with Christian Delez on Twitter.

Mar 3, 2017

Mapping is a tool we don’t talk about enough. Mapping includes visualization, affinity grouping, analysis and synthesis all in one tool. We don’t talk about enough this tool that can literally help you map your way to success. In this episode we talk about different types of mapping approaches that can (literally) help us navigate the system we work within.

 

About Carolina Gorosito

Carolina is a natural connector and team enabler, great at finding people’s strengths and helping them combine their skills to become hi performers in the organisations and obtain better results every day.

You can connect with her via her personal blog: carolinagorosito.com.

You can link with Carolina Gorosito on LinkedIn and connect with Carolina Gorosito on Twitter.

Mar 2, 2017

Successful Scrum Masters have many tools in their toolbox, Carolina shares with us 3 tips that she uses regularly in her definition and journey towards a successful outcome for her work.

 

About Carolina Gorosito

Carolina is a natural connector and team enabler, great at finding people’s strengths and helping them combine their skills to become hi performers in the organisations and obtain better results every day.

You can connect with her via her personal blog: carolinagorosito.com.

You can link with Carolina Gorosito on LinkedIn and connect with Carolina Gorosito on Twitter.

Mar 1, 2017

When we are involved in change processes, it is important to understand what tools can help us create a positive understanding between stakeholders and teams. Carolina shares how Nonviolent Communication and Clean Language can help Scrum Masters in their role as change agents.

In this episode we mention Nonviolent Communication which was the subject of a recent episode here on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast and Clean Language.

 

About Carolina Gorosito

Carolina is a natural connector and team enabler, great at finding people’s strengths and helping them combine their skills to become hi performers in the organisations and obtain better results every day.

You can connect with her via her personal blog: carolinagorosito.com.

You can link with Carolina Gorosito on LinkedIn and connect with Carolina Gorosito on Twitter.

Feb 28, 2017

Retrospectives are one of the most challenging aspects for us as Scrum Masters. Retrospectives drive the teams insane because they question their sense of security. They Retrospectives drive Scrum Masters insane because it is a high-pressure, fail-prone meeting. Retrospectives drive stakeholders insane because they can cause communication problems, or escalations that they will then have to tackle. With this kind of pressure we need a technique that helps us surface problems in a safe way, and help the teams understand their own situation without a major break-down. Carolina explains the Constellation exercise and how that can help us with high-stakes Retrospectives.

For more information on the Constellation retrospective technique read Carolina’s article on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast blog.

 

About Carolina Gorosito

Carolina is a natural connector and team enabler, great at finding people’s strengths and helping them combine their skills to become hi performers in the organisations and obtain better results every day.

You can connect with her via her personal blog: carolinagorosito.com.

You can link with Carolina Gorosito on LinkedIn and connect with Carolina Gorosito on Twitter.

Feb 27, 2017

Conflict is a native aspect of human relationships. Instead of being scared by it, we can learn to use the natural conflict that is part of our teams, to help the teams find a new level of performance. Carolina helps us understand how conflict can be productive for the teams and for us a Scrum Masters.

 

About Carolina Gorosito

Carolina is a natural connector and team enabler, great at finding people’s strengths and helping them combine their skills to become hi performers in the organisations and obtain better results every day.

You can connect with her via her personal blog: carolinagorosito.com.

You can link with Carolina Gorosito on LinkedIn and connect with Carolina Gorosito on Twitter.

Feb 24, 2017

As Scrum Masters we are trained to see problems as the “enemy”, the entity to be attacked, and if possible eliminated. But is that the case? Always? In a healthy system we should know what are the problems we are facing. That does not mean that we should solve all of those problems, however. After all it is a system. Solving one single problem may eliminate many other side-effects. Listen in to learn how Islam understands and develops his view of a healthy system.

 

About Islam Ismail

Islam Ismail is a senior agile project manager and Scrum Master at Wirecard Technologies GmbH in Munich, Germany. In his current role in PMO and with teams he focuses on scaling agile and unifying processes across divisions.

He was an electronics engineer for five years and a technical manager for six years before making the switch to software in 2011.

Fueled by his passion for the agile field, Islam moved to Munich, Germany, in 2014 where he enriched his knowledge and experience.

Outside of work, he enjoys reading, traveling, playing soccer with friends and spending time with his wife and two lovely daughters.

You can link with Islam Ismail on LinkedIn and connect with Islam Ismail on Twitter.

Feb 23, 2017

Knowing what we mean by success is hard, but necessary. The next step however is also critical: how to know if we are progressing towards that goal. Islam shares with us the aspects of success he considers as a Scrum Master, and he also shares tools and metrics he uses to assess his own work.

 

About Islam Ismail

Islam Ismail is a senior agile project manager and Scrum Master at Wirecard Technologies GmbH in Munich, Germany. In his current role in PMO and with teams he focuses on scaling agile and unifying processes across divisions.

He was an electronics engineer for five years and a technical manager for six years before making the switch to software in 2011.

Fueled by his passion for the agile field, Islam moved to Munich, Germany, in 2014 where he enriched his knowledge and experience.

Outside of work, he enjoys reading, traveling, playing soccer with friends and spending time with his wife and two lovely daughters.

You can link with Islam Ismail on LinkedIn and connect with Islam Ismail on Twitter.

Feb 22, 2017

One of the change processes we need to constantly be working on is the Continuous Improvement cycle for the team, and organization. In this episode we talk about how we can help teams adopt tools, that will help them communicate better, share information with teams that are off-site, and generally avoid dependency-related problems. Tools are not the solution, but supporting the teams to use tools effectively is one of the change processes we need to help teams with.

 

About Islam Ismail

Islam Ismail is a senior agile project manager and Scrum Master at Wirecard Technologies GmbH in Munich, Germany. In his current role in PMO and with teams he focuses on scaling agile and unifying processes across divisions.

He was an electronics engineer for five years and a technical manager for six years before making the switch to software in 2011.

Fueled by his passion for the agile field, Islam moved to Munich, Germany, in 2014 where he enriched his knowledge and experience.

Outside of work, he enjoys reading, traveling, playing soccer with friends and spending time with his wife and two lovely daughters.

You can link with Islam Ismail on LinkedIn and connect with Islam Ismail on Twitter.

Feb 21, 2017

Great teams live and die by their ability to collaborate. Collaboration is a key skill for all in the team. But what can we do when that collaboration is not emerging? Islam shares a story of a team that exhibited several collaboration anti-patterns, and what we can do as Scrum Masters about it.

 

About Islam Ismail

Islam Ismail is a senior agile project manager and Scrum Master at Wirecard Technologies GmbH in Munich, Germany. In his current role in PMO and with teams he focuses on scaling agile and unifying processes across divisions.

He was an electronics engineer for five years and a technical manager for six years before making the switch to software in 2011.

Fueled by his passion for the agile field, Islam moved to Munich, Germany, in 2014 where he enriched his knowledge and experience.

Outside of work, he enjoys reading, traveling, playing soccer with friends and spending time with his wife and two lovely daughters.

You can link with Islam Ismail on LinkedIn and connect with Islam Ismail on Twitter.

Feb 20, 2017

The roles in Scrum were created for a reason, trying to “merge” those roles into one person comes with many dangers. In this episode we explore the case of the senior tech lead who was also the Product Owner for the team, and the problems that come from that.

Islam also shares tips on how to deal with that case, if you have to face it.

 

About Islam Ismail

Islam Ismail is a senior agile project manager and Scrum Master at Wirecard Technologies GmbH in Munich, Germany. In his current role in PMO and with teams he focuses on scaling agile and unifying processes across divisions.

He was an electronics engineer for five years and a technical manager for six years before making the switch to software in 2011.

Fueled by his passion for the agile field, Islam moved to Munich, Germany, in 2014 where he enriched his knowledge and experience.

Outside of work, he enjoys reading, traveling, playing soccer with friends and spending time with his wife and two lovely daughters.

You can link with Islam Ismail on LinkedIn and connect with Islam Ismail on Twitter.

Feb 18, 2017

Nonviolent communication is a method of a communication process developed by Marshall Rosenberg beginning in the 1960s. It focuses on three aspects of communication: self-empathy (defined as a deep and compassionate awareness of one's own inner experience), empathy (defined as an understanding of the heart in which we see the beauty in the other person), and honest self-expression (defined as expressing oneself authentically in a way that is likely to inspire compassion in others).

Melissa was made aware of Non-violent communication via the work of Bob Marshall (check out his episode on Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast), and his blog where he published several articles about Nonviolent Communication. Thanks to this work, and some of the Marshall Rosenberg Nonviolent communication videos on YouTube, Melissa got started with NVC. A journey that changed her view of communication and what matters when it comes to building stronger teams.

But how can we, as Scrum Masters benefit from this method?

A simple context where NVC may be useful is when teams and team members want to get and give feedback. NVC can be very useful to phrase our feedback in a way that highlights what we are looking for (our needs being met) without expressing judgement over others (our opinions of them). But that’s only one of the contexts where NVC may be useful. There are many others.

I bet your team has a lot of written communication with stakeholders and within the team. Is that right? Well, then you know that written communication has a lot of potential for misunderstandings and to generate conflicts. How can we avoid that? By using better approaches to communicate. Melissa also explains how we can use NVC ideas to make written communication less conflictuous and more likely to have the impact we hope.

What we need to be able to communicate effectively

NVC is a good method to structure our communication, but before we can use that method we need to understand how we feel. NVC, being a needs/emotions driven communication method requires us to be aware of our own emotions and feelings. So we need to learn about emotions and needs. And especially we need to enlarge our vocabulary about needs and feelings so that we can communicate them in a way that is understandable by others. This is especially important if you are not a native speaker of the language you use at work.

Where should I get started if I want to know more about NVC?

When it comes to getting started with NVC, Melissa has a few recommendations for us. The first is the book by Marshall Rosenberg: Nonviolent communication, A Language of Life, but is also very important to practice every part of the method as well as read and learn about emotions, feelings(PDF) and needs.

In this episode Melissa also shares simple practices you can take into use immediately to help you practice NVC and help your team learn about, and maybe even get started with NVC.

About Melissa Lang

Melissa has worked in many diverse jobs over the last 20 years: ethnomusicologist, cook, IT project manager, agile coach. In all of those jobs, her main focus has been on strengthening team work and facilitating communication. As a dedicated agilist for 10+ years Melissa has worked at a range of companies, from start-up to multi-national corporation. Currently she is coaching teams from Barcelona and Hamburg at Xing AG where she has been employed since December 2011.

You can connect with Melissa Lang on Twitter and link with Melissa Lang on XING or LinkedIn.

If you want to follow Melissa’s writings, be sure to follow her blog over at Medium.

Feb 17, 2017

How do we understand the system conditions affecting our teams? Anssi shares with us how he does that, and why his approach is important for Scrum Masters to get a good grasp of what Systems Thinking is really about.

In this episode we refer to Gerald Weinberg’s Introduction to General Systems Thinking book, a good primer for those interested in learning more about Systems Thinkin.

 

About Anssi Lehtelä

Anssi is a new born optimist, team work enthusiast, and a big supporter of get more done by doing less things. Developer , tester, and the "process guy".

You can link with Anssi Lehtelä on LinkedIn and connect with Anssi Lehtelä on Twitter.

Feb 16, 2017

Anssi shares his 4-area model for Scrum Master success and also some of the indicators and metrics he uses to evaluate his own work.

 

About Anssi Lehtelä

Anssi is a new born optimist, team work enthusiast, and a big supporter of get more done by doing less things. Developer , tester, and the "process guy".

You can link with Anssi Lehtelä on LinkedIn and connect with Anssi Lehtelä on Twitter.

Feb 15, 2017

Change brings uncertainty, fear and perhaps even chaos to teams and organizations. Change processes can be forced and cause more problems than what they are supposed to help with. How can we avoid this? How can we bring in the necessary changes, perhaps even big changes, without causing chaos? Listen to Anssi as he shares one such story with us.

In this episode we talk about the Lean Change Management book by Jason Little.

 

About Anssi Lehtelä

Anssi is a new born optimist, team work enthusiast, and a big supporter of get more done by doing less things. Developer , tester, and the "process guy".

You can link with Anssi Lehtelä on LinkedIn and connect with Anssi Lehtelä on Twitter.

Feb 14, 2017

Teams evolve, people move on and new team members join the team. Those moments are prime candidates for disaster. New team members bring new ideas and they change the internal team dynamics. This, in turn, can lead to chaos and problems. How can we avoid such problems? Listen to Anssi’s story and what he recommends you take into account if you are about the hire new team members.

 

About Anssi Lehtelä

Anssi is a new born optimist, team work enthusiast, and a big supporter of get more done by doing less things. Developer , tester, and the "process guy".

You can link with Anssi Lehtelä on LinkedIn and connect with Anssi Lehtelä on Twitter.

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